


civil charms and priestly speels

by tortoiseshells



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Cat Puns, Civil War Reenacting, Emma Green: Recovering From "Southern By Grace of God", F/M, Gen, Gettysburg National Military Park, Henry Hopkins would be a Joshua Chamberlain fanboy you can't change my mind, Mary Phinney: Baseball Nerd, Modern AU, US Americans & the collective weirdness that is national memory of the American Civil War, battlefield tourism, infodump! the modern au, strong pro-USPS opinions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-08-14 01:49:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20184235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoiseshells/pseuds/tortoiseshells
Summary: It's the summer of Two-Thousand-And-Something, Colonel Green's regiment's down a few reenactors, and Emma Green finds herself in Gettysburg,again.





	1. Chapter 1

**i.**

“Emma! Will you come down, _please?_”

Henry’s voice drifted up to her, borne aloft by the ghost of a morning breeze. He’d humored her at the first observation tower, just past the Peace Memorial, by climbing the deceptively insubstantial steel stairs, and stared at the guidebook fixedly while Emma oriented herself to the sights: east across Mummasburg Road towards Barlow Knoll, west towards Herr Ridge, South towards McPherson and Seminary Ridge (and the College, one supposed). _The first shots of the battle were fired here_, she’d said, gesturing behind her. Henry had looked at her, glassy-eyed, unimpressed. Just as well. They were more her father’s words than hers.

And that, she surmised, an hour and an unfathomable number of monuments later, was the heart of the matter. Mama and Papa – _Colonel and Mrs. Green_ – were here with their regiment, and Alice with them, _and wouldn’t it be nice if you’d come with us, sweetheart? Like we used to?_ There hadn’t been a summer before she was 19 that Emma hadn’t spent a handful of days in Gettysburg, trailing along after Mama’s wide hoopskirts and Papa’s grey coat. By the time she was 10, she knew the battlefield as well as any of the guides or rangers; by 13, she could recite Shelby Foote better than her Bible – something Mrs. Green, caught between the United Daughters of the Confederacy and her Episcopalian charitable organizations, regarded as a mixed blessing.

She’d be down in a minute – she leaned over the thin metal rail and shouted the same down – but she wanted the openness, the wide-ranging vista, the sense that she was looking down at a map, at a Risk board, a distance from everything. A remove from the odd feeling in her chest as they drove down West Confederate Avenue, along the ridge, Emma narrating the massing of Confederate troops in the shade of Spangler’s Woods on July 3rd, 1863, or Henry’s silence at the outsized Virginia Memorial, or how much the dappled mid-morning sunshine looked as it had a decade and change ago. Things were simpler up here. The Peach Orchard and The Wheat Field to her east, Little and Big Round Top to the southeast, and the Eisenhower Farm behind her. Emma pinched her nose, looked up, and sighed. This really was her own little version of _North and South_.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Henry said, as she reached the bottom, looking faintly ill.

She patted his hand and smiled. “No more towers today.”

“Promise? There’s one out by – “ he squinted, fumbling for his glasses – “Culp’s Hill?”

“Promise. You can barely see anything out there, anyway.”

“So why go?”

_Why do any of this?_ Emma thought, but, having embarked upon this path, was determined to see it through, “So I can tell you about how important holding Culp’s Hill was to the Union line, of course, and that the high ground directly overlooked the Baltimore Road, which the Union did not want the Confederacy to take control of, and that –“

“You’re a marvel, Emma.” Henry shook his head, and started the car, “Now, can we please get on to Little Round Top?” 

**ii. **

Mary had pleaded exhaustion when Emma asked if she wanted to tour the battlefield, and Jed, though sorely tempted by the prospect of winding up Emma – who, after midnight and the better part of a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, had once confessed to dressing as Scarlett O’Hara for Halloween – opted to stay behind. “After all,” he’d mused, “Someone’s got to keep an eye on Mary. Who knows what she’ll do this far behind enemy lines?”

Mary had rolled her eyes, but the arrangement suited everyone: Emma and Henry could have an awkward and morally-charged tour of the battlefield, and Mary and he could sit in peace on the B&B’s shady porch, and do what was, after all, the point of vacation. They waved their friends off – Mary tucking a bottle of sunscreen into Emma’s pack at the last moment, while Jed only laughed, and reminded them cocktail hour started at 4PM, sharp, so they’d better not have any ideas about taking too much longer than the movie.

“It’s less than five hours!” Emma shot back, over the top of the car.

Henry was more sanguine: “Let us know if anything changes.”

Jed could hear the drone of the guided tour begin as they pulled away.

“So,” he said, dropping back into the rocking chair next to hers without ceremony, “What are the odds Emma’s brother has a stars-and-bars tattoo?”

Mary, pointedly, did not look up from her novel.

That was all right by Jed, who felt able enough to cause trouble on his own. “You’re absolutely right. We have to consider the possibility of the barbed-wire bicep.”

“Stars and bars refers to the first flag of the Confederacy,” she corrected, turning a page, “Not the battle-flag. Shouldn’t you know the difference?”

“Maryland was a border state, and I’ll have you know at least one of my ancestors caught dysentery fighting for Honest Abe.”

This was, judiciously, leaving aside the others who’d crossed the Mason-Dixon, but Mary already knew that, and it didn’t quite seem to be the point. Besides, one of them, having resigned his commission in the Navy because he’d wrongly heard Maryland had seceded, didn’t count. It wasn’t Great-Great-Something-Great-Uncle Buchanan’s fault Gideon Welles had politely told him to kiss his ass. “And anyway,” he continued, “You haven’t answered my question.”

“I don’t bet, Dr. Foster.”

“But I do,” he grinned, “Come now, Dr. Phinney. I’ll make it worth your while.”

“And how do we know who’s right?” For all that her poker face – almost never actually used for poker, a fact both bemoaned and blessed by their coworkers – was the stuff of legends, Mary’s nose crinkled. No doubt at the thought of actually and voluntarily having to interact with Jimmy Green! But she was softening to the idea of the bet, which was all Jed wanted to hear.

“Text Emma. She’s exasperated enough with her family as it is.”

“And interrupt their date?”

“It’s an important matter,” he said, with a too-grand sweep of his hand, “Knowledge. Science. The life and death of our ability to keep a straight face at dinner.” 

Mary hid her smile in a sip of lemonade.


	2. the vision-place of souls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jed & Mary go get lunch, while Emma & Henry go stare at some rocks - and talk about them, at length.

**iii. **

Sometime after noon, long after the ice in their glasses had melted down to nothing, Mary set aside her Alcott with a sigh, and stretched out in her rocking chair. It seemed a shame to wake Jed, who’d managed to pretend contentment with an old NEJM before drifting off, but there was lunch to consider. Not that there’d much choice in the matter, Gettysburg being miles from anywhere. Still, food was food – and with the specter of “dinner with the regiment” looming just over tomorrow’s horizon, she’d be grateful for any meal that wasn’t hardtack. Or eaten in the company of the Virginia 19th.

“Jed,” she said quietly, laying her hand on his shoulder, “Jed, dear. Wake up.”

“Barbed wire or battle flag?” he mumbled.

“Lunch.”

This wasn’t quite fair; Emma had texted her a picture, followed by a stream of exasperated emojis, of a tattooed eagle holding the stars and bars and the battle flag. Jimmy Green had certainly covered his bases, and the workmanship, so far as she could tell, was admirable. Mary’d certainly seen far worse in her time – artistically, at least – but she could only imagine what Charlotte would say.

Jed, though, knew none of this, and looked at her blearily before closing his eyes and turning away.

“Emma texted,” she coaxed, lightly, “But lunch first.”

“If I get up – and I’m not promising to, _Doctor Phinney_ – will we settle the bet?”

“Yes – Ice cream, after? Emma recommended a place on Baltimore Avenue. The loser pays.”

“On a day like today? Absolutely.”

“But! we never decided who was betting on what, if I recall correctly, _Doctor Foster_.”

“Oh. Hmm.” Jed sat up, doing as Mary had done five minutes before and stretching out in his rattan chair. “I take the ‘Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia – honestly, Mary, everyone knows what you mean when you say ‘Stars And Bars’ – and you take the barbed wire bicep?”

“Done,” she said, and shook his hand, “Now please get up.”

Rising to his feet, Jed balked. “You’ve already seen the message,” he said, “So you know who’s the loser. And you agreed.”

Mary made a noise of mild agreement.

“I’ve lost,” he sighed, dramatically. Only his grip on Mary’s hand prevent him from clapping it to his forehead, and Mary, not for the first time, regretted that she’d never seen Jed as Mercutio in his college theater days.“Mother was right. You only married me for my money.”

“If she’s right, it’s a first.” She showed him the photo. Jed snorted, punched the air, and kissed her – none of which made her feel as though she’d lost the bet. 

“Well! I promise to be a gracious winner – you’ll chose the ice cream. Let’s go!”

They flipped through the Yelp recommendations – Emma, inconveniently, having mostly lunched with her parent’s regiment when she was younger – before deciding they were better off walking aimlessly and hoping for the best. But wandering through Gettysburg proper, Mary quickly decided, was an odd experience. Thaddeus Stevens’ home, split logged and plastered, elbowed against its modern, vinyl-sided neighbors (_surely that would have suited the old radical_, she thought), and forage-capped tour guides waved bright plastic flags as they led the public around. Souvenir shops sold t-shirts, palm-readings, photos done as fake daguerreotypes, mixed military paraphernalia. They passed a monstrosity of a mid-century hotel (“Let us be your Gettysburg Address!” proclaimed its sign) on their way to the railroad station – it was hard, on the whole, to imagine grave-faced Abraham Lincoln alighting on a grey November morning to the same town.

After a good half-hour’s amble, they decided to try their luck at a small coffee shop, not too far from the college campus – both of them reasoning that even if the food wasn’t any good, then at least the caffeine would be. Mary checked her phone, skimming over a cluster of messages from Emma – photos of a Massachusetts monument (the 12th, she saw, squinting), a group of women in crinolines gathered around another monument, and a very adorable corgi. Henry’s texts, predictably, contained more prosaic updates of their progress. She showed Jed the corgi over a plate of very creditable arepas – which were, perhaps, the most unexpected part of the trip so far. She did not expect that distinction to last.

And when they settled in the park next door to the ice cream parlor, racing the heat to finish their chocolate, Mary leaned over. “I want to go here,” she said, trading a brochure for the waffle cone, and watched as Jed flipped the glossy page open. His brow furrowed to a nearly comical extent.

“Civil War Tails?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“It’s – what? Dioramas with _cats_? Miniature cats?”

“There’s a diorama of Little Round Top,” Mary said lightly, taking the it from Jed’s hands, “And don’t you think we should see something of the battlefield while we’re here? We’ll be able to compare notes with Henry and Emma, when they return.”

“Little Round Top with _cats_.”

“There’s the Battle of Hampton Roads, Fort Sumter, and Andersonville Prison, as well.”

He favored her with a stunned, disbelieving look – the one that he usually saved for Doctors Hale and McBurney, or the unvaccinated – and took a moment or two to gather his wits back around him. Mary pressed on, thinking to herself she had the advantage.

“Emma tells me there’s a Civil War park in Virginia with dinosaurs. Surely this isn’t that ridiculous.”

“Oh, all right,” he said, offering his arm to her like it was 1863, “But not for them. Only so you’ll have something to talk to Plum about, when we get home.”

Mary and he began to walk in that direction, and, before too long, Jed had moved past resignation to amusement, and kept up a stream of punning names for feline Civil War generals.

**iv.**

They’d skipped climbing Big Round Top at Emma’s suggestion, which was fine by Henry. The breeze had died and the humidity had gone up – the hike surely would have been unpleasant, and he already felt, well, sticky. Emma had waved it off: _it’s worse than this in Virginia, darlin’_, she said with an exaggerated drawl, leaning across the center console to kiss him on the cheek. He silently thanked God that the parking area was empty and there was no one to see him blush.

All this to say, they finally arrived to Little Round Top a little after noon, jockeying for parking with seemingly everyone in the state of Pennsylvania. Emma had recovered herself after the quiet spell she’d fallen into after the South Observation Tower – enough to trading him the ball-cap (“Amherst Sucks” - the one that had been his sisters’ idea of a joke) for the water bottle. 

“I’d better hope that there’s no one from Amherst here.”

Emma hmmed, snapping a photo (and sending it to Frannie or Nettie, no doubt). “Could be you just hate Jeffrey Amherst?”

He had to concede that point, juggling his keys, phone, and guidebook to lock the car behind them. The familiar icon caught his eye – Foster had texted him. _Tell Miss Scarlett to check her messages_.

Henry looked up, only to see Emma checking her own phone and rolling her eyes. “Jed and Mary,” she said, shaking her head, “They’ve gone to Civil War Tails.”

“With the cats?”

“With the cats. Jed’s made a cat pun with every Civil War notable he can think of,” Emma proffered her own phone: a grey-coated cat on a grey horse. _Claw-bert E. Lee???_, read the caption.

“Anyway,” she continued, “They’ll be staring at a diorama of Little Round Top, and we’re actually here. Don’t tell me, Henry Hopkins, that you came all the way to Gettysburg to talk about Jed Foster instead of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain?” 

He’d come to Gettysburg for her, although that went without saying aloud. One night, coming back from a spring-evening run, he’d found a half-eaten pint of Butter Pecan Crunch on the counter and Emma up to her elbows in the petticoats she’d packed away under the bed. She’d offered to go alone. He refused. It wasn’t just a matter of fairness – though Emma’d waded through two Hopkins Family End of Term & Holiday Extravaganzas (which was, for a family as much inclined to theological as intellectual brawling, a weird mixture of spiked eggnog, whole-cloth recitation of the King James, and oral exams) while he’d only ever made polite conversation with her parents over dinner – it was what she’d confessed later, in the quiet dark. _I don’t want to shame you._

At the time, he’d promised _I couldn’t be ashamed of you_, but her worry remained. Henry did what he could: he made the travelling arrangements, asked Frannie to collect their mail and walked her through the care of Emma’s staggering collection of succulents and orchids, and helped Emma to rip out and re-sew what must have been a mile of seams. His grandmother might have told him he could turn perseverance from a virtue to a vice, but what else was there for him to do, except be constant in his care?

They went to the statue of Gouvenor Warren, gazing out over the land of Gettysburg with one hand on his hip, and field glasses in the other, and Emma decisively cracked the guidebook open. Below them was the boulder-strewn Devil’s Den – the backdrop of grisly photos of the dead of Gettysburg, that had haunted him as a boy – and across the wide battlefield, the observation tower that Emma has climbed only a short while before, the sun catching in her hair when she leaned over the railing to high down. “Between here and there,” she said, looking up from the book, “Is where the main body of the fighting on the 2nd occurred. Devil’s Den. Plum Run – there.”

“Plum Run? Should we tell Mary?”

“I wouldn’t. Some sources call it the Valley of Death.”

“Oh.”

“The campfire story goes that Plum Run ran red, on July 2nd, the fighting was so hard and bloody. But that’s probably nonsense – there’s a story like that about almost every pond or stream in a battlefield in the US. But you’d believe it, right? I did, when I was a girl, dragging Poe with me everywhere I went. 60,000 casualties in 3 days! Why wouldn’t the rivers be red?” Emma glanced up at him, looking a little ashamed of herself, for the ghoulishness of what she’d said. “I didn’t understand fluid dynamics much as a child,” she added, with an uneven smile.

“I don’t think anyone does,” he said, following her lead.

She passed him the guidebook and a grateful look. “Now, I promise we’re getting to your boys. But this is the best view we’re going to have of the battlefield before the Pennsylvania Memorial, up to our right, so make sure you get a good look around! Confederate attacks by Hood and McLaw come across this open land, through Devil’s Den, at great cost of lives that day – but Confederate marksmen in between the rocks bring a lot of grief to the end of the Union line, too. Other troops avoid the dangerous open ground and move through the woods to try to flank the line, but that’s what we’ll see at the 20th Maine monument. Further up the line, past Colonel Vincent’s men, the fighting isn’t on Cemetery Ridge itself. We can’t really see them from here, but the Wheat Field and the Peach Orchard – that’s where that part of the fight is hardest.”

“And that’s where General Sickles moved his men,” he said, flipping back in the guidebook to find the relevant section, “Towards the Peach Orchard?”

“He thought Sherfy’s land’s high ground was a better position for his men, and didn’t want Confederate artillery to set up there, but it created a salient on the Union line.”

“A salient?” 

“A wedge,” she said, gesturing to demonstrate, and growing more excitable as she went, “Imagine my arms are the Union line, straight from elbow to fingertip to elbow. Meade doesn’t exactly feel comfortable on the second day, but he has a good defensive position. But what Sickles does bends the line, like so” – Emma tented her fingers – “a wedge. He’s ahead of the rest of the Union line, which means he has to stretch his men further to fill the gaps, to prevent being cut off. And Lee’s men can hit him on two sides, instead of the one. Foote called it a blunder, but Keegan thinks the Peach Orchard Salient blunted the force of Lee’s assaults on the 2nd.”

Henry had a fair idea what the answer would be, but he asked the question anyway. How often did Emma get to talk about this thing that she’d loved, without painful reminder? “What happened?”

“Longstreet’s men destroyed Sickles’s 3rd Corps and took the high ground,” she said, simply, “It cost Sickles his leg, and would have cost any other man his good reputation – but Sickles didn’t have one. He was a Tammany man and everyone knew he was made general for throwing his weight behind Lincoln, not because he could fight. But the worst part? He married Teresa Bagioli when she was 15 and he was 32, had a string of affairs, and then he had the gall to murder her lover – Francis Scott Key’s son! – only two years before the War. First successful use of the temporary insanity defense – Stanton – Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s Secretary of War – got him off.” 

Henry found a much-abbreviated account of Sickles’s pre-war misbehavior. “That’s not all in the guidebook.”

“No, but it does add something, doesn’t it? None of these men were saints. Even if,” she added, looking up from the Devil’s Den to where the Confederates would have massed, “Some were worse than others.”

Emma glanced down at her hands – as she did when taken aback or shocked or ashamed. And there it was – what had quieted her an hour ago, in Pitzer Woods – _shame_. That she held all this within herself, this great love for the war and its people. He’d only seen glimpses of it before – the books he’d helped her carry up to their apartment, the seemingly endless armfuls of linen and silk packed away in paper and cedar chips under the bed, and – memorably – knowing that _The Philadelphia Story_ and _Shenandoah_ had James Stewart in common at Wednesday night pub trivia. But that was where it stayed: on shelves, or out of sight – and he knew why. Emma had been raised as a Daughter of the Confederacy, and she had believed it for too long. Even though she’d turned her back on it, even though she’d marched with Charlotte and Mary, it was there. 

But that was why he was here, and what Henry above almost anything else believed: a person could change, that they could move beyond their past mistakes. How could he, with the great sin of his past, believe differently? And choose to move forward, every day, with his practice and his life? Henry closed the guidebook and took her hands between his own. “You’re not them, Emma. Either your ancestors or your parents. I can’t be ashamed of you.”

Emma looked at him with such open warmth and gratitude and love he would have blushed, except that she quickly turned into his shoulder, and sighed damply. “I – I’m sorry, Henry – we’ve come all this way to see your boys, and I’ve been nattering on about people you don’t know or care about, and – I’m practically making you work on your vacation!”

“I’m here for you, Emma,” he promised, “Much as I admire Chamberlain, I don’t think it’s a – a stretch to say I care more about you than him.”

Emma, a little red-eyed, laughed a little, and nodded. “Such Yankee understatement! But – um, can we just – sit for a while? Here?”

They did.

**iv. - coda**

After re-orienting themselves, they headed south along the top of the hill, climbing a miniature castle that Emma swore was a monument, and then backtracking into the woods, and down the slope. They passed where the 44th New York (_Theirs is the castle_, Emma said), then the 83rd Pennsylvania, and then, ahead of them, the 20th Maine. The end of the Union line.

Here it was. The low stone wall, the craggy monument that he’d never seen before. They weren’t alone, though Emma had said that was to be expected. The others were as a varied as could be: a family with restless boys, an older woman laying a handful of lupine next to the engraved rock, two men reading from a guidebook, more consulting maps or papers. Someone laughed. The boys rocked on their heels, clearly wanting to bolt for the air-conditioned cars. A man read the names in a low voice, to himself, a guide open in his hands like – like a hymnal.

_The vision-place of souls_, Chamberlain had said, almost a century and a half ago, at the dedication of this monument. Henry couldn’t believe that the Maine colonel could have foreseen this – the smooth-paved roads busy with visitors, the little tokens left around the base of the monument. He didn’t know if he and Emma, or the children running down the path, or the tired-looking woman wilting in the heat – would they all count as _reverent men and women_¬ in Chamberlain’s formulation, come to – what? Pay respects? Seeing the battlefield was one thing, but _seeing_ – that was something else entirely. Much earlier in that speech, he knew, there was _The "lost cause" is not lost liberty and right of self-government. What is lost is slavery of men and supremacy of States._ It wasn’t possible to _see_ Little Round Top without that central fact – that a college professor had ordered his men, with empty barrels, to fix bayonets and sweep down the hill because the Confederacy valued slavery over the Union.

He wasn’t looking forward to dinner with the Greens and their regiment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the grave of David Glasgow Farragut (or Furragut?), I am making none of this up.
> 
> Mary and Jed visit the Ugly Mug Cafe (which does have good arepas! or did, last time I went) before going to Mr. G's Old-Fashioned Ice Cream, if you wanted to follow along with Google Maps. Thaddeus Stevens's (one-time Know Nothing, leader of the Radical Republicans, thorn in Andrew Johnson's side, & played by Tommy Lee Jones in _Lincoln_) home in Gettysburg is as I've described it, although it's now rentable thru AirBnB? The "Let us be your Gettysburg Address" sign 100% existed, at least in the summer of 2018.
> 
> And Civil War Tails is a real place, and it is magnificent. I recommend it to everyone.
> 
> Plum, as always, belongs to middlemarch!
> 
> Emma and Henry are actually Doing History, so, they explained most of it for me! Gosh, that's nice. 
> 
> I have no photo evidence, but I know at least one Williams College alum with an "Amherst Sucks" hat. I don't think Henry cares deeply about his alma mater's rivalries, but do his meddling sisters? 100%.
> 
> I'm not following it exactly, but I imagine that Emma and Henry are using Reardon & Vossler's _A Field Guide to Gettysburg_.
> 
> Next up: Phoster and Emmry compare notes on their day, and brace for enemy action.


	3. just before the battle, mother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “She didn’t get sick?” Alice Green pulled over a stool and hopped up. “Emma used to get terribly carsick whenever we drove up from Alexandria. Papa had to pull over near Catocin Furnace once.”
> 
> or, the intrepid quartet goes to dinner. Souvenirs, government service, baseball and Emma's humiliation are on the menu.

**v.**

_(a)_

“ – Whisker-field Scott Hancock, John Bell Hiss, William Tecumseh Purr-man, and Mew-lysses S. Grant.”

A stunned silence hit the bar table after Jed’s recitation: the man of the moment looking terribly smug, Mary both amused and irritated, and Henry, although forewarned by Jed's texted _Claw-bert E. Lee_, at a polite loss for words. She should have seen this coming, Emma supposed. 

“I don’t think Hiss works for Hood,” she said, after some hesitation, “It’s a real last name.”

Jed gestured dismissively. “But you knew exactly who I meant.”

She did, but didn’t think it signified – of course she got it, but Henry was probably thinking of Alger or Donald Hiss, if anything. And yet Jed was pleased, and Mary looking all the better of a full 36 hours away from the hospital, so what was the point of spoiling everyone’s fun? She felt better this evening than she had this morning, after all – refreshed after cleaning up from the day’s walking, reassured by Henry’s constancy, a kind of fizzy warmth from time spent in the company of friends (and a real Old Fashioned at the bar). “I did,” she said, smiling, “But Clawbert E. Lee really was your best one.”

“Not Mewlysses S. Grant? Your Dixie sympathies strike again, Miss Green.”

“Or ‘Clawbert’ could just be a funnier name. I’d name a cat Clawbert.”

“And someone might think you like James Joyce, with a cat named Mewlysses,” said Mary, in the spirit of things.

“Truly a fate worse than death.” Jed deadpanned, though Emma didn’t wholly agree – she hadn’t finished _Ulysses_ but she didn’t like Faulkner for much the same reason, and that, to Papa, had been a crime indeed. “But never you fear, Emma, the secret of your literary opinions are safe with us.”

Henry looked up from the brochure that Mary and Jed had brought home from the museum. “Did you find anything to bring home for Plum?”

“Mary found her postcards, but cat toys were thin on the ground.”

“My nieces will like this one –” Mary had come prepared, and flashed a card with rows of blue-clad cats on the slopes of Little Round Top, before fanning out others beneath – “Charlotte will appreciate that the Massachusetts 54th hasn’t been forgotten, so this one for her and Samuel. The next one, with the field hospital? – for Dr. Brannan. And this last one is for you, Henry. Rebecca – the woman running the museum – said that’s Andrew Tozier?”

“That’s kind of you,” said Henry. Emma glanced down at his card – the cat with a Union flag born aloft, proclaiming ‘COURAGE’. An exhortation or a label? A little tipsily, she imagined Plum shouting encouragement – like a benevolent Salem? – and swept the image out of her mind before she could start giggling. Henry flipped it over. “You’ve addressed it and stamped it?”

“Mary will keep the USPS afloat if it kills her.” 

“The reports of the Post Office’s problems tend to be greatly exaggerated,” said Mary, who, Emma knew, had Leslie-Knope-like feelings on the subject of privatization vs. government commitment to public service, “And I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t appreciate getting something other than bills or circulars in the mail.”

_(b)_

Mary was discoursing on the Postal Service, and – Jed thought – might have gotten from the workers’ union to the Populists and _fin-de-siècle_ American politics if they hadn’t had other matters at hand. Replacing the postcards in her bag, she caught his eye and titled her head. _Now?_ Now, definitely – he nodded. They ought to have given it at Cocktail Hour, but it was Emma’s turn to bring something new: a jar of elderflower syrup that she’d traded Mira, the new nurse on her ward, some of her peach preserves for – and then she and he had spent a quarter of an hour tinkering with a virgin sparkler recipe. Mary found another recipe online – requiring rosemary, of all the things! – which had not helped the matter, but there was glory in an experiment, even a failed one that tasted a little too much like a badly-mixed soda. 

Anyway. All that to say, they’d spent almost all of Cocktail Hour fiddling with recipes instead of actually sipping, and so, here they were now, with the gift.

Mary offered up a small white box. “We found something for the two of you, as well.”

“The coat may not be to the Green family palate, but the hoopskirt will,” he couldn’t help but add, watching Emma and Henry share a puzzled glance – _You open it? No, you_ \- before Emma took it, carefully pulling aside the top to reveal –

“Mary Phinney!” Emma cried, pulling the little display out, “and you – Jed Foster! You – oh, I can’t believe you two!”

Disbelief really was the proper reaction, he thought when he and Mary had first seen the display domes on the shelf, filled with little miniatures of all kinds: flag-bearers, charging cavalry, couples with children, infantrymen (well, infantry-cats). But Mary had smiled that particular smile – witchcraft and fondness all bundled up into one – and pointed out one in particular, with a dancing couple. _Emma and Henry_? Admittedly, it was ridiculous to imagine Henry Hopkins as a Union officer, but they’d all seen Emma in a hoopskirt, hadn’t they? _And_, reasoned Mary, as they walked back towards the B&B in the hazy afternoon, _it is a little silly, and not strictly about Gettysburg, or the War_. They could look back at it without automatically associating – well, whatever happened tomorrow – with it.

But Emma had gotten over her surprise, and was beaming at the display. “I don’t know if you’re too much or too kind! Oh, Henry, look at this! Take it!”

“We’re glad you like it,” said Mary, half-muffled by Emma’s enthusiastic hug.

“I thought it’d look nice as a cake-topper,” Jed said, after Emma practically tackled him.

“Jed!” Mary swatted his arm, more fond than irritated. Hopkins, turning the dome back and forth to get a better look at the miniatures, was simultaneously amused and bemused, and obviously happier with Emma’s good humor than he was with the gift. 

Emma’s smile barely diminished, as she settled back in her seat. “I’m not getting married in a crinoline.”

“Doesn’t your beloved have an opinion on the matter?”

Mary and Emma exchanged a glance, and Hopkins (a little flustered, bless his Yankee heart) started to speak, when –

“Sister!” 

– he was interrupted.

_(c)_

There was one picture of Emma’s family in her and Henry’s apartment, and Mary could never tell whether it was lost among or assimilated into the riot of Henry’s family’s photos. He was the third of nine; it seemed natural that their refrigerator was papered with Frannie’s daughters’ rudimentary flowers, that graduation photos and Christmas photos jousted with Grey’s Anatomy for space on the bookshelves, and that a wide-angled portrait from last year’s reunion – with everyone from his Grandmother Electa to baby Sam (Julia and Marianne’s first child, just two months old there) – should occupy a place of pride over the bricked-up fireplace. Emma had long since begun to appear in them, so it didn’t seem so lopsided, so unfair – if the Hopkinses considered her family, weren’t they her family photos, as well? 

Mary suspected Emma thought one thing and believed another, but she didn’t have time to dwell. She recognized the woman standing at their table from that one stiff portrait studio picture of the Greens, though she had been barely sixteen in it. Alice. Emma didn’t talk much about her family, but who did? She knew Alice had just finished at Sweet Briar, and Emma had sent a beautiful note folded around an engraved business-card holder.

“Emma, dear,” Alice Green said, stopping at the head of the table. Emma was holding the miniatures close to her chest, Mary noted. “I didn’t expect to see you here! Hello, Henry.”

“Alice,” Emma said, after a half beat, she and Henry rising to greet her, “How are you?”

“Oh, fine – Papa and the men had the most wonderful day out in the field!”

Emma smiled and agreed about the weather, letting her sister drive the conversation – _How long had she been in town? Had she spoken to Mama and Papa?_ Mary watched: it was vocation and avocation both, for her. Emma was tense. Mary could have chalked it up to surprise alone, but then, Emma had pulled Mary aside one Saturday night in April and confessed – that her mother and father had invited her to come to Gettysburg for the first time since their falling-out, and should she go? Did this count as an olive branch – should she extend her own? It was hard not to remember Emma as she’d first come to know her: a tired, pale nursing student who worked Christmas Eve at the coffee shop nearest to the hospital, reciting the bones of the hand to herself instead of carols.

“Are you just sitting down or just getting up?” asked Alice, “Only I’m supposed to meet Tom and some of the boys here, but they’re running late. Can I join you for a round?”

“We’ve already ordered our food, but you’re welcome to join us until the company shows up,” Emma replied, looking quickly around the table. No one disagreed. “Let me introduce you. Alice, this is Dr. Mary Phinney – and her husband, Dr. Jed Foster. Mary, Jed, this is my sister, Alice Green.”

“Lovely to meet y’all. Mama says you’re coming to our little event tomorrow?”

“As spectators,” Jed interjected. There was a thread mischief in his voice, a _but_ or an _and_, leading inevitably to an opinion or a provocation. Emma jumped back into the conversation and steered it away from him.

“Mary’s only ever seen Revolutionary War reenactments, growing up in New England.”

“Oh, have you? That’s good for you – it’s a loud affair, Dr. Phinney. I nearly jumped out my skin at my first battle. Tom thought I was being silly.” 

“Emma did tell us we might want ear protection.”

“That’s thoughtful of her – we’ve missed you these last few years, sister. Papa’ll be pleased to know you remember how to survive out here! But I have been going on.” Alice smiled again, with a well-rehearsed expression of sunny friendliness. “How was your drive down? Y’all did drive?”

The drive had been like any other road trip, only magnified: Emma had gotten motion-sick and grumbled from Framingham to Allentown, Henry looked like a martyr by the second time an accident slowed their way to the Tappan Zee, and Jed – well. Jed had been his irrepressible self, and he and Emma had bickered like siblings over everything: how far back Emma’s seat was, the next pit stop, how much NPR was appropriate ... well, it gave him something to do, and took Emma’s mind off the nausea, so Mary just caught Henry’s eye in the rear-view mirror and rolled her eyes. After all, shouldn’t there be some good old-fashioned Yankee solidarity to counterbalance the Dixie drama?

“We made good time,” said Emma, judiciously.

“She didn’t get sick?” Alice Green pulled over a stool and hopped up, “Emma used to get terribly carsick whenever we drove up from Alexandria. Papa had to pull over near Catocin Furnace once.”

Emma pursed her lips, like she had bitten into something sour. “Henry didn’t have to stop.”

“I am sorry you were sick. But you’re here now, and unless you were ill on your friends, I’m sure we’ll all have a marvelous time. How do y’all know Emma?”

“The hospital,” Jed answered, looking terrifically amused by the younger Green. Mary tried to catch the eye of their harried waitress, before agreeing with Jed. “Yes, we met at the hospital.”

She shot him a glance, while Alice ordered, quite specifically, a cuba libre. Jed shook his head minutely, while Emma looked relieved (something Henry mirrored). So there were parts of the falling-out that weren’t common knowledge. What Alice said next confirmed it:

“I might have guessed, poor thing barely even had time to call home when she started her nursing program.”

“The phone line works two ways, Alice,” said Emma, sounding exactly as though she was trying to sweet-talk a patient into taking their meds.

“What did y’all have to talk about? Patients, I’m sure.”

“Outside of work? Baseball.” Emma had early on spotted Mary’s Manchester Fisher Cats keychain, and the rest was history, as far as both were concerned.

“Papa did raise us cheering for the Orioles, but Emma had to be a perfect rebel and switch when the Nationals came to DC. She was heartbroken when John Patterson married Miss District of Columbia.”

The drink came, and Alice took a long sip that managed to both be conspicuously lady-like and yet simultaneously half-drain it. In the pause, Mary looked around the table. Emma fidgeted with one of her rings, Henry wore his therapist’s expression of polite impartiality, and Jed coughing not-at-all subtly into his napkin. Mary was a younger sister herself – she’d done the same thing to Caroline while they were both in their bratty teenage years – but neither of the Green sisters were so young. And Emma, glancing between her hands and Henry, seemed less irritated and more – unnerved? _There_ was that half-healed estrangement, the family that Emma missed and misgave. Well, Mary resolved to herself, if Emma had asked her here as a friend, then Mary could run some polite interference. She was on the point of asking Alice about the Orioles’s lackluster season, as the door to the bar banged open, and –

“Oh! Tom! Tom, dear!”

One of the men broke off from the pack that had just entered, walking over with his hands in his pockets and a polite smile that – Mary thought – didn’t quite reach his eyes. Alice kissed his cheek and laid her hand on his arm – a gesture both proprietary and (the thought was a little unkind) calculated to show off her engagement ring.

“Tom, these are Emma’s friends, from up north – Doctor Jed Foster and Doctor Mary Phinney. Doctor Foster, Doctor Phinney, this is my fiancé, Tom Fairfax.”

He shook their hands, drawling “Pleasure to meet you,” while Jed repeated the pleasantry and Mary managed a polite “Likewise.”

“They’re coming to our little event tomorrow,” Alice continued.

“Well, we hope you’ll will enjoy yourselves,” said Tom Fairfax. 

“We’ve got to return to our friends, but it was so lovely to meet y’all. Apart from Henry, we never meet Emma’s friends. ‘Til tomorrow!”

_(d)_

Alice and Tom were well away, Henry thought – or maybe only hoped – by the time that Jed looked around the slightly-stunned table and asked, “Was that the sibling who got a DUI on a horse?”

“No,” said Emma, leaning into his shoulder and burying her face in her hands, “That was Jimmy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suppose this could also be "Four Perspectives on Dinner, Interrupted"?
> 
> All of the postcards (except the field hospital one) from Civil War Tails are real, as is the miniature that Mary and Jed buy for Emma and Henry. Mary strikes me as a postcard person, and I will live and die by Mary having Opinions about the USPS.
> 
> I'm not sure, exactly, how I'm translating Jed's morphine addiction, but while I'm writing him dry I do think the ritual of creating annoying complex cocktails is something that would appeal to him, and, really, can't you just see the man throwing ingredients in the shaker FOR SCIENCE!? Thus, Cocktail Hour is more Mocktail Hour. Jed needs his space to perform, after all.
> 
> Baseball is the game of nerds. Mary likes numbers. Thus, Mary is a baseball fan. The Fisher Cats are out of the real MP's one-time home: Manchester, NH - Mary seems like she'd prefer minor league ball to the major leagues, just on the basis of access and cost. Trying to get a Red Sox ticket? Total nightmare.
> 
> Special thanks and a major shoutout to @theonlyredcar/ SpaceCaseWriter13 for doing the actual research on states that one can get a DUI or OUI on a horse in. You're the real MVP.
> 
> Next time: THE ACTUAL REENACTMENT, THANK HEAVEN. Thank you for slogging through the set-up, the day of battle is at last upon us!

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Herman Melville's "The House-top", about the New York Draft Riots of 1863.
> 
> This is definitely - in part - born out of my own weird experiences with playing tourist at different National Parks & museums, and a long & fascinating time watching national discourse about the American Civil War. It's a weird world out there, folks. You can follow along with Henry and Emma on any given map of Gettysburg National Military Park, but I didn't have a specific BnB in mind for where the gang is staying.
> 
> It is a modern AU, tho', so who knows what's going on - other than to say I stand 110% behind my assessment that Emma Green _would_ have dressed up as Scarlet O'Hara at some point in the modern world, and Jimmy Green drives a lifted pickup. And probably rolls coal, too.
> 
> History notes - sort of abbreviated for this? Gideon Welles was Lincoln's beleaguered Secretary of the Navy. Jed's _Great-Great-Something-Great-Uncle Buchanan_ is Franklin Buchanan, Marylander, first Commandant of the USNA, and indeed resigned his commission when he thought his home had seceded. Alas, he was misinformed. Gideon Welles did not literally tell Buchanan to kiss his ass, but that was the gist of the message. Buchanan went on to command CSS _Virginia_ (the ironclad formerly known as USS _Merrimack_), but was severely wounded **just** prior to the famous duel with USS _Monitor_ at Hampton Roads, and so missed out on that dubious distinction.


End file.
